FAQs

We are Oyatsu Fansubs. Our name originates mostly from the Bungaku Shoujo series which one of our translators has previously worked on.

How long have you been fansubbing?

Our group was founded on 1st July 2011. We consist of a small group of staff who a majority are/were from different groups and have years of experience.

I’ve heard about the poor reputation Oyatsu has.

We are not the best, and we don’t claim to be the best.

Our source of motivation to fansub a particular project is based on our general consensus as a group that the said show interests us all. Although we are not excellent, we aren’t pushovers either. That, we can safely assure you.

According to rumours, you guys are just a spawn off Doki Fansubs?

Most of our staff members are/were in various groups. One of the groups that happens to be in that list is Doki and that’s all there is to it.

Fansubbers have the freedom to choose and work with different groups. This is like globalisation. You don’t have to be American to work in America. We, at Oyatsu, allow staff members their freedom and liberty to work for other groups so long as it doesn’t affect our workflow.

So what you’re trying to say is Oyatsu is Doki in essence?

OK, it seems you don’t get it. Let’s get to the point. Our first translator used to be in Lunar, ASF, Chihiro, Doki and now Oyatsu. So are you saying Oyatsu is Lunar, ASF and Chihiro besides being Doki?

And we do our stuff totally independent of other groups (unless it’s a joint, of course), in case you’re thinking along those lines.

I just struck lottery, you lucky bastards! I want to donate!

One of our code of conduct is to never involve money in fansubbing. We are not sure how long we can last as a group without donations. But we will NEVER consider putting a donation button and asking for others to donate. Similarly, we don’t accept donations in any other forms.

Why don’t you accept donations?

There is a very fine line drawn between asking for donations and profiteering from fans supporting our work. We don’t involve money generation of any kind. That includes not using Fileserve as a form of DDL support because they pay you a small sum for a certain number of downloads you get.

Why do you include honorifics?

Japanese honorifics are what defines their culture. It is something that can never be translated into English directly. If you are watching fansubs. Chances are, you are a fan of Japanese culture. We don’t do localisations, so we keep stuff in Japanese that we feel cannot accurately convey the original meaning if we force it into English. Honorifics happen to be one of them and it means a lot of things.

Some dialogues cannot be translated without honorifics, especially when the characters drop their honorifics to emphasise closeness or hint at a romantic intention to their other party. If honorifics are removed, this part of the translation will never get across to the english speaking/reading viewers.

It’s now the 10-bit era! You guys are outdated. Just quit fansubbing!

As reflected in our staff list, we do NOT have a dedicated encoder. This means all our releases up till this point of my writing are using shareraws. We get the best raw available out there while not compromising too much on our speed and consistency. If the raw happens to be 8-bit, we release as 8-bit. If the raw is 10-bit, we release as 10-bit. If the raw is upscaled, we release as upscaled.

Thanks to our encoder, we can release in 10-bit now. That being said, if any group we’re jointing with requests releases in 8-bit, we’ll comply with that.

Why don’t you just recruit an encoder? Idiots!

We do plan to recruit an encoder in the near future. But our group is not particularly outstanding as those out there. So we don’t have any particular incentive or benefit that will enable them to choose us over them. To put it frankly, this is an issue of encoders not wanting us and NOT our unwillingness to find one.

We have one now.

I spotted a typo! “Realise” should have been “Realize”.

That is not a typo. We use British English as our editing standard. It is a valid and acceptable form of English.

You guys don’t have a dedicated IRC bot. You guys are shit!

Yeah, we don’t have a dedicated bot to host our releases currently. Hosting a bot requires a server and that means money. We don’t accept donations, but that doesn’t mean we are rich. So we try on our part to utilise the “free” resources out there as much as we can. Distro just happens to be one of them. There are also enough public bots hosting our releases. We don’t need to have a dedicated bot.

However, if you are kind enough to host us a bot and not put advertisements for donations on it, we will be happy to list you as a distro member of our staff. You get to watch our releases first, if that means anything to you.